Film reviews: A whale of a time, forgotten friends and street fights

WHALEFALL (15, 106 mins) ***

If you want to have a whale of a time at the movies this month, why not try being swallowed by one in a bid to test your own gut reaction to being fed a load of cinematic cobblers?

Rather like spacemen who end up being trapped more believably inside their rockets, Jay Gardiner, played by fast-rising Austin Abrams, spends much of the film trying to escape from the claustrophobic unknown.

The acid-reflux effects are pretty good, considering Jay’s plight inside a giant sperm whale begins with a pretty full oxygen tank – but you just know his struggle will soon leave him gasping for survival if he is not to be suffocated along with anything else the whale has swallowed.

Written and directed by Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You, 2023), this is fundamentally a cautionary tale about grief, with Josh Brolin on Jeff Bridges-style form as Jay’s late father, Mitt.

Should the younger Jay have listened more to his old man’s seafaring advice when he was a kid? What memories will come flooding back when he needs his dad the most?

To that end, Whalefall is generally at its best on dry land, save for one particularly traumatic tummy scene which had audience members behind me gulping for air at the same time as willingly bursting into laughter – a comical combination that will take your own breath away should it happen to you.

The best reason for diving into Whalefall is to see Abrams dominating a film on his own for the second time in weeks, after the surprisingly funny Resident Evil saw his snowbound character trying to deliver an organ for transplant on September 18.

Abrams has such a rough time of things in both films that you could call his misadventure here a ‘bad day in the orifice’.

That he almost single-handedly makes both films work in the face of adversity bodes well for a great career. Like Back to the Future and Doc Hollywood star Michael J Fox – who has never been fully replaced – Abrams has the rare ability to put you into his shoes. More, please.

FORGOTTEN ISLAND (PG, 109 mins) ****

With half-term almost upon us, the latest animation from DreamWorks (Shrek) is a timely, family-friendly day out into Filipino mythology and eternal, universal friendship.

The colourful story is set in the 1990s and features friends Raissa and Jo becoming trapped in Nakali, a world with a violent creature they have heard lots of stories about.

A film with wings, memories, charm bracelets, a magical sand dollar, stylised flashbacks, chase sequences and more, Forgotten Island is all the better for literally drawing on the history of Filipino art, rather than just the usual best-friends-forever ideas that Hollywood so often wants to dish out without rhyme or reason.

As Jo and Raissa race to return home before they end up forgetting each other, the girls are sassy enough to make themselves believable.

STREET FIGHTER (12A, 120 mins) *

Though given an extra push by being screened in IMAX as well as Cineworld’s seat-shaking 4DX format, this action fantasy is unlikely to make much sense to many viewers, whichever way they see it.

The certificate is 12A, but the content inevitably includes bladed weapons, choking and heavy blows as estranged Street Fighters Ryu and Ken Masters try to uncover a sinister plot – only to find themselves in danger of having to battle each other.

Finding a real plot would have been more worthwhile, given that this is the third film spin-off from the video game first launched in 1987. The end product from Japanese director Kitao Sakurai is a martial arts minestrone – and far harder to swallow than Whalefall.

Recently released

DIGGER (15, 129 mins) Tom Cruise aims for the Oscars with a bravura performance as the world’s most powerful but ageing, overweight oil tycoon. Like President Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize ambitions, the overwrought on-screen mix-up will see him fall short despite the film’s ambition and relevance.

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (U, 132 mins) A not-unwatchable adaptation of Jane Austen’s 1811 novel, given its still-relevant approach to love, inheritance and sibling rivalry for younger generations, but it’s simply not as good as Ang Lee’s much brighter 1995 version. ***

HEART OF THE BEAST (12A, 101 mins) Special Forces veteran James Belmont (Brad Pitt) faces a joint battle for survival with Odin, his ex-combat German Shepherd, following a plane crash. Good cinematography, but the plot’s odd construction limits the emotional pay-off. ***

VERITY (15, 117 mins) After a family tragedy, Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) is unable to finish her latest novel. Enter ghostwriter Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) to give Jeremy Crawford (Josh Hartnett) a double problem alongside young son Crew. Another Colleen Hoover adaptation, this overlong thriller with a weak score struggles to breathe new life into a genre that has been allowed to wither for too long. **

THE UPRISING (15, 128 mins) Captain Phillips and Bourne director Paul Greengrass delivers hand-held action camerawork as a ploughman (Andrew Garfield) leads the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt against tax grabs. Not as good as Viking epic The Northman (2022), but there’s a strong cast and brutal action aplenty. ****

THE SOCIAL RECKONING (15, 112 mins) This Facebook-story follow-on from The Social Network (2010) was a much more necessary ‘sequel’ than Street Fighter and Sense and Sensibility. But by splicing his story backwards and forwards to try to illustrate cause and effect, continuing writer and now director Alan Sorkin robs his own film of full-thrust dynamism without Se7en director David Fincher alongside him. But an equally physical Jeremy Strong brilliantly replaces Jesse Eisenberg as the stiff-backed central character, Mark Zuckerberg, to save the film from mediocrity. ***

Reviewing films in Birmingham since 1989, Graham Young is a former UK Regional Film Journalist of the Year and three-time runner-up